


to sleep, with the moon in one eye and the sun in the other

by deathlessaphrodite



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Character Study, M/M, bull loses an eye but it's nothing major, some small amount of gore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-03
Updated: 2018-04-11
Packaged: 2019-04-17 21:34:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,242
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14198142
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deathlessaphrodite/pseuds/deathlessaphrodite
Summary: Ashkaari did not remember the first time someone had called him by his name.-Hissrad never felt much like a name. It was a title.-It wasn’t until he introduced himself to Krem that The Iron Bull started feeling like a name.-The first time Dorian had called him amatus, it had been an accident.





	1. ashkaari

Ashkaari did not remember the first time someone had called him by his name. Some of the other imekari had been named by their friends - he had given one of the other children the name Asaara,  _ wind _ , for his light feet. He hoped he’d been given his name by Tama. She had told him that names were like shoes - you outgrew them. He had asked what she had been before she was Tama, but she had looked sad and told him to go and play with the other children, so he had never asked again. 

 

Tama told him stories about the ashkaari; great people with great minds, always asking questions, gaining answers and helping others with them. Though it flattered him to be compared to those so extraordinary, Ashkaari did not see himself as a great mind; his questions were that, questions from one who did not yet know any of the answers. 

 

Once he did know them, he passed them on to his fellow imekari. After they were supposed to be abed, they would crowd around him and wait to hear his stories; he knew Tama knew, and did nothing. In time he would look back and recognise her allowance of their childlike rule-breaking as her own sort of rebellion; he wishes, as a man, to be able to return to her. To ask her more questions. To know if she is proud of him. 

 

When he was a child, it was easier. A well-done arithmetic problem, a well-told proverb, some well-remembered line from a poem she had read to him. Her hand reached down - impossibly large, then, though he has no doubt he would tower over her, now - and ruffle the stubs where his horns would be.  _ “You are strong, and your mind is sharp. You will solve problems others cannot." She smiles, but sadly.  _ She knew, then, what it would do to him, surely. She had sent many children away to similar fates. 

 

The Inquisitor poked and prodded about the Tamassrans and Seheron. It brought up some nasty memories, but he felt he owed it to her - when they’d first met, she’d said to him,  _ “My parents were wrong to make that decision for me”,  _ though her derision of the Qun came through easily enough. She was kind and eager to listen, but she wouldn’t budge on her want for freedom. 

  
_ Ashkaari.  _ The name had left him in the salt-spray of Seheron, stripped bare, an axe in his hand. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! The first chapter is pretty short, but the other ones will be a bit longer. This is the first da fic I've posted, and the first fic I've posted in a while, so please feel free to leave a comment (please. god. please). 
> 
> The title is from Paul Éluard's poem "Sequence", from the collection "Capital of Pain".
> 
> "You are strong, and your mind is sharp..." is from  this banter with Cole and Bull!
> 
> This  is my tumblr, come chat!


	2. hissrad

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hissrad had never felt much like a name. It had been a title.

Hissrad had never felt much like a name. It had been a title. 

 

They’d started calling him Hissrad a year before he’d left Par Vollen. They threw the kids into work just after they turned 12 - though at that young it was more of a trial period (this did not remove the shock from Dorian’s face after he told him. More and more he wondered what exactly he’d missed out on, being raised under the Qun). He’d been somewhat insulted, at first - lying wasn’t exactly encouraged by the Tamas, and he tended to pride himself on following the rules to a T. 

 

He worked for six years in Par Vollen. Then the Tamassrans sent him to Seheron - said they thought he had “promise”. Hissrad had been proud. Seheron was where the best went - it was also the ass end of all nightmares, if the talk of the re-educated baker he bought bread from on his breaks was to be believed. 

 

He was sad to leave the place behind. It had been his home for so many years, but he was willing to do what he was bidden in service to the Qun. So many around him chafed at the constraints put upon them; instead, Hissrad bloomed (or so they thought). He worked with his unit, met Vasaad, ate in the same marketplace every day, killed more and more Tal-Vashoth, ‘Vints, Fog Warriors, every day, in service to the Qun. 

 

He remembers that time so clearly. Vasaad laughing at something one of the Rivaini merchants said; the sharp sting of salt spray in a fresh wound; the way the dust of Seheron stuck to him, no matter how he tried to clean it away. 

 

Vasaad laughed so easily. He felt very deeply, for someone who saw such gore every day; Hissrad became too accustomed to it. He became frugal with what he gave feeling to - another rebel was nothing to pay mind to, but the way Vasaad wore his hair; his sharp and exultant grin; the way his eyes reflected the moon in the deep of the night so well. This was the way of the Qun - to do as he was bidden and take happiness in what was there to take it from. 

 

Vasaad died at the front. He died quickly, Hissrad could give thanks for that. A knife through the heart, given by some viddathari defector he cut down as easily as if she were a vine. And another, another - one more Tal-Vashoth and this fog that had settled around his mind would dissipate and Vasaad would stand there, smiling amongst blood darkened to black in the moonlight. 

 

It was barely light when they found him. The interim between handing himself over to the re-educators and being booked passage into Minrathous was barely three weeks, he learned, later. Vasaad’s death still weighed heavy on him - none of the deaths in Seheron had ever weighed so heavy, indeed - but he was willing to return to service of the Qun. They needed him in the South, and so he began heading for Nevarra almost as soon as touching ground. 

 

_ A broken sword is a hundred nails waiting to become.  _ The Tamassran tasked with watching him until he got on his ship told him that, handing him bread and cheese and a soft fig, wrapped in waxed cloth. 

 

The closer to Nevarra he gets, the more it seems like poetry and less like truth. He looks to the moon, and thinks of Vasaad, and keeps riding South.  

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! Please please feel free to leave a comment and tell me your thoughts <3
> 
> Here's  my tumblr, come talk to me! (please)


	3. (the) iron bull

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It wasn’t until he introduced himself to Krem that The Iron Bull started feeling like a name

He chose The Iron Bull as a joke. An extension of the way the  _ bas _ in the port of Minrathous looked at him; the words he heard whispered in the tavern in Nevarra; the grunt Captain Fisher gave him upon their first meeting. All they needed was his axe and his muscle, and so that is all they saw. 

  


Nothing much could be said of his time working with the Fisher’s Bleeders, other than that it was the time he really learned how to be a spy. It wasn’t something they trained you for, really, going South; there were explorers under the Qun, but the Ben-Hassrath weren’t counted among them, and he was a special case, anyway. 

  


So he learned on his feet: how to make people trust him, how to scare people he wanted to scare, how to ease someone into a laugh. He told himself that he did everything in service to the Qun - the drinking, the sex, the long days when he didn’t leave his bedroll because his knee bothered him so.  _ The Iron Bull  _ never seemed to fit him as Hissrad had; it was foreign, like this land, and these people. It was a piece of armour, or a knife - something to be used and remade when it became dented or scratched, or began to pinch at the skin.

  


It wasn’t until he introduced himself to Krem that it started feeling like a name:  _ “You're safe now. I'm The Iron Bull. What do you want me to call you?" _ His eye had hurt like shit (or, rather, where his eye had been), but he could go without it. He’d seen the boy fight off 4 men before they’d gotten him to the ground; if nothing else, he’d be a good addition to the Chargers, and he looked as if he could use the help. 

  


The boy told him his name - Cremisius, definitely a ‘Vint - and patched up his eye as best he could manage, and after he’d been given a shirt with less blood on it and some food he proved himself to be as shrewd and capable as the Bull had guessed he would be, and he kept on proving it, no matter the challenges thrown his way. 

  


Krem slipped quickly into his role as lieutenant. It was certainly easier, running a mercenary company, with someone at his side to keep the boys in line, and it was made easier still for Krem’s good humour and capability when it came to the job. They worked well together, all of them. 

  


The world was different with the Chargers at his side; fresh for the plucking, it seemed. This was now the way of the Qun: the flash of steel on steel in a good fight; Krem’s bright laugh in the harsh Ferelden sun; the warmth they all found, huddled together in a tavern after a job. 

  


It came to a head on the Storm Coast. 

  


Dorian asked him later:  _ Was it hard? To decide something like that? _

  


_ No _ , he said,  _ of course not.  _ He did not say  _ I defied the Qun when I took you to bed with me _ , because Dorian would feel guilty. He did not say  _ I had abandoned the Qun by loving any of you at all _ , because that would scare Dorian. Instead, he said:  _ And I don’t regret it.  _ He didn’t, most days. The Iron Bull was no liar.

  


Anything had reminded him of Seheron, then - the smell of Dorian’s cardamom perfume, the way his knee strained sometimes, the curl of Adaar’s white-gold hair over her freckled shoulder. But he would not give those things up for his weight in gold, or for the perceived safety of the Qun, and so he chose his men, and Dorian, and the Inquisition, and he would do it again, a hundred times over. 

  


He confessed this to Dorian over the beacon-light of the one tallow candle he had in his room. Dorian’s thumb fit perfectly into the closed-over place where his eye had been, as he stroked a hand across the Bull’s face in the quiet safety of the still dark early morning. He took Dorian’s warm hand in his and kissed it, once, before breathing deeply and looking out to where the sun was beginning to rise over the mountains. 

  


He resolved something: in the morning (when it became what really could constitute as morning) he would drop the article. No weapon was he, any longer. Now, just a man. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's the third chapter! This one was the hardest to write, so far, but I hope it turned out alright. Please feel free to leave a comment! 
> 
> "You're safe now..." is from  this banter with Cole and Bull.


	4. amatus

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The first time Dorian had called him amatus, it had been an accident.

The first time Dorian had called him amatus, it had been an accident. Golden sun pouring through the window, curtain-less, lighting Dorian up like a lantern. Dorian turns his eyes upon the Bull, and says the words: “Good morning,  _ amatus _ ,” 

 

His eyes crinkle when he smiles like that, glowing. It makes the Bull’s heart flip in his chest. Instead of saying that, or pushing Dorian down into the bed like he would on any other day, he says: “Hey,  _ kadan _ ,” And runs a hand through his mussed-up hair. Dorian’s moustache (just as mussed-up as his hair) twitches as he smiles. This man, with sleep still in his eyes, who woke Bull up by pressing his cold feet against his back, is the most wondrous thing he has ever had the pleasure of seeing.

 

He didn’t know what the word meant, at first.  _ Amatus.  _ The affection behind it had been clear, though. Had run through Dorian’s voice like honey. And so, it seemed appropriate, to answer with honey of his own:  _ kadan.  _ Vasaad had called him that; they’d called one another it, at one time. It seemed long ago, lying in bed with Dorian. His  _ kadan.  _

 

Normally he would’ve been wracked with curiosity to know the definition of the word. He picked up other languages pretty quick, Common, Orlesian, some Antivan, which itself wasn’t so far from Tevene. He might be able to guess if he tried. But it seemed almost sacred; if Dorian wanted him to know, he’d tell him. 

 

Dorian didn’t use the word often. Mostly in quiet moments, peaceful spaces in between the next fight. Curled together in their tent (he wasn’t sure when things had started becoming  _ theirs _ ), drawing breath in tandem, and Dorian would whisper it in a hushed tone:  _ amatus.  _ When they lounged in the one spot of good sun Skyhold’s garden had, Bull reading from one of Cassandra’s books, and Dorian would push it out in between laughs:  _ amatus.  _ After Bull was hurt in the field, and Dorian would come and say it in a stern tone of voice, telling him to be more careful, reminding Bull indelibly of a tamassran:  _ amatus.  _

 

When Dorian left for Tevinter, he placed his hands on Bull’s face and murmured it:  _ amatus.  _ And when he returned, he practically yelled it, in the docks at Val Royeaux, surrounded by a hundred Orlesian nobles. Every time, something gets fluttery in Bull’s chest. 

 

The villa was a gift from Dorian’s mother. An unexpected one, though not unwelcome. Bull has come to understand that they’ve begun to get along much better since the Magister Pavus died. 

 

They got married there. Dorian decried the whole thing as overly sappy, but when they were alone together, after the Chargers had finally retired (mostly at the urging of Krem), he twisted his wedding ring around his finger and said: “ _ Amatus. _ Beloved,” 

 

Love shone through him like light. This was a name he was intent on holding on to, so long as he was bidden. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's time... for the cheese
> 
> This is the end! I've had so much fun writing this little piece, and I hope I have time to keep writing more for this pairing, because I love them so SO much. Thanks to everyone for reading (and leaving comments and kudos)!
> 
> Also thanks for my girlfriend  for beta-ing this whole thing, even though she doesn't know anything about Dragon Age. She's a true saint.


End file.
